yes, I will love you too

engagements

July 15, 2008

love medicine

once again i have been molecularly transformed

i am so very lucky, i know i say that all that all the time

but i am

i get invited to the best places, i get to have the absolute best company wherever i go

even if i'm just in the laundromat, where i happen to be at the moment. my dryer was making a funky sound & it was just me & another woman sitting there. she counseled me that there was a man next door in the subway sandwich shop that cared for the machines & i went over there & the man behind the counter smiled a big smile & got very paternal with me & accompanied me back to the laundromat & we looked at/listened to the dryer together. he opened the door & touched my clothes very very gently, almost without touching them, out of respect, but to feel the presence of heat & then he assured me he would come back & check in case i wanted to leave, which of course i did, cause the girl has things to do

after he left, the woman using the dryer next to me nodded & wished me a good day

it really doesn't get better than that, does it

community

i spent the good part of the weekend in a tipi with 70 other people, staying up all night, sitting up, praying, singing, taking peyote, listening, feeling

i only knew a couple of people there & those i knew just barely

before i traveled with carlin to the ceremony, i prepared myself by searching deep inside for a prayer to bring. i knew that this was a big opportunity, the gift of the peyote & the gift of the unknown & the gift of my current state (& the state of the world) of being cracked wide open, to the spine so to speak. i can't even begin here to speak to the state of pdaddy & my current configuration, mostly because it has become clear that i just

don't know

& that we both have a whole whole lot of learning & growing to do but

i do know that i am in the right place & the right time

& i am grateful to have the opportunity to love

even, even if might possibly be a trick

(& i mean no dis to pdaddy on that disclaimer, I am just fessing up to my own path of getting sick/getting well . . that is how the native people speak to the body's need to expel the medicine, the peyote, throwing up, they call it getting well & when one person in the tipi, in the ceremony gets well, they are revered by the rest of the circle because they took it for all of us & we pray & offer cedar to the fire for them, in love with them & when i get paranoid & when i close myself to love & when i doubt -- even if there may be some truth to it, even when my heart may be in some dangerous territory

i know i am taking it for all of you & i know i am woman enough to get well & i do)

so who knows at the moment about me & pdaddy but i do know he was sorely sorely missed, not by my side in front of the big medicine purification but there in my heart

his father passed away a few days ago & pdaddy is being forged into the man he is so obviously meant to be

in any case, i was in the big opportunity & the peyote worked deep, worked hard

if i may be so presumptuous to say so

it was subtle because it was within the group, the medicine, the love & the tea & i felt the ability to spread any physical discomfort or any feelings of being overwhelmed to the whole cathedral room of the tipi

my prayer was no more separation & i spent the 8 hours of sitting meeting every person in the tipi eye to eye, even for a second & listening inside to the voice that said

i am all of you

& at the end, in the (good) morning, in the (great) morning, it was a big love fest & i knew all of them by heart, every molecule

i mean it

i left before i was finished with the medicine, driving in a labyrinth fashion through the hills of western mass, with no map & no plan, like the crow flies, with hugo as my wing man & carlin, perhaps reading the map & hugo told me i drove like a fire keeper, with the medicine & with an inner focus

i almost didn't make it. i had wanted to bring some of the medicine home inside of me. i wanted to finish it in my room, in my bed, but i finished it on the road, lost in the hills & the green, with a mayan next to me & an adventure girl in the back seat

I most surely need to be swaddled in the warm bosom of your love medicine. Last night I held a space, and bore witness to someone in the throes of deep pain. I held her, met her there, even as her body wracked with sobs and the frustration of being where you are and not where you would rather be. I can't count how many times I have been there myself. And even thought I chose to be there and wanted to witness this exorcism of pain, and I took it, and I held it for her, this woman I have been acquainted with for a week, I feel very much the need to be cleansed, to get well, to be restored. To refill my catchment tanks of love, so that I will have more to pour into the earth again.

** . . . bore witness to someone in the throes of deep pain. I held her, met her there, even as her body wracked with sobs and the frustration of being where you are and not where you would rather be. I can't count how many times I have been there myself . . .**

if i could take you to my bosom i would . . i have been there so recently, in the frustration of being where you are & not where you would rather be, the worst pain of all, today i was at the beach and was in that & felt myself pushing the toxin of disappointment in self out of my body like sweat, just pushing, pushing, like giving birth, it was palpable & so satisfying . . . it really can leave us

". . .and acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I
find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and
I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the
way it is supposed to be at that moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s
world by mistake . . . unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitude. . . "